This is Why You Don't Quit Too Soon

26 replies
At the end of October, I had an idea for a site. I bought a domain name and put up a WordPress blog. Then, I found a nice theme for it. The site was to cover a couple profitable niches--not just one.

My plan was that I could find the time to put up an article a day on it. Just one a day. Easy, right?

I put up content for two days. That's it. Now, on the first day, I did put up about five articles--one for each category. Day two, I put up a couple more.

Then, I quit. I think there are seven articles total.

At times, I've thought about trying to do it regularly, but I've had things I considered to be more important. I even thought about just taking the site down but never got around to doing it.

I did put Google AdSense on the site. Of course, my intention was to keep the site updated, not just create a junky little site with sparse content.

I knew the site was getting some small traffic, but it didn't seem to register in Google AdSense. I already have one site that Google AdSense doesn't seem to think exists (even though ads display on the site), and it looked like maybe this was destined to be another. So, that was another factor in deciding my time was better spent elsewhere.

So, I've largely ignored/forgotten about the site.

In late December, when checking my AdSense stats, I noticed a rather nice AdSense click.

You can probably guess where that came from.

Imagine how much better the site might be doing if I had kept up with adding content and done something to actually get traffic to it.

If I had done an article a day, I'd have over 60 articles on the site by now. That's more content to get indexed. And I could be getting more than a fraction of a visitor each day. And if the CTR remained about the same, and I could get one click a day, this site would be doing very nicely.

This should be a lesson for newbies. First, you have to do some research and make sure you're getting into a niche (or niches) with some real potential. Next, you need to consistently work at it. And you need to be patient. On this site, I quit after two days. It took nearly two months before it had any results at all. If I had stuck with it, perhaps I could be getting more consistent results from it.

In this case, I had some research and a good plan to back me up. I just didn't stick with the plan.

So, let that be a lesson to you all.

On the flip side, I received in the mail today a check for some of the work I was doing instead of working on this particular site. The second lesson is picking your projects wisely. Which, in this case, I did.

You can't do everything, you know.
#quit
  • Profile picture of the author Troy_Phillips
    I have a few site like that and I am actually messing with them after almost a year because they are making me some constant adsense .

    One of the sites made over $60 in actual sales and I had to search for an hour just to see what site it came from and what I needed to do to complete the sale .
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    • Profile picture of the author Joe118
      Dan, consider putting your site on auto-pilot with UAW. They have a wordpress plugin that feeds your site with articles in the categories you choose.

      Oh and its free for site owners.
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      • Profile picture of the author raynman
        Originally Posted by Joe118 View Post

        Dan, consider putting your site on auto-pilot with UAW. They have a wordpress plugin that feeds your site with articles in the categories you choose.

        Oh and its free for site owners.
        What is UAW?
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        • Profile picture of the author Dan C. Rinnert
          Originally Posted by raynman View Post

          What is UAW?
          United Auto Workers.

          With the economy down, I guess some of them are writing articles now.

          Actually, it's the Unique Article Wizard plugin that Joe118 is talking about.
          Signature

          Dan's content is irregularly read by handfuls of people. Join the elite few by reading his blog: dcrBlogs.com, following him on Twitter: dcrTweets.com or reading his fiction: dcrWrites.com but NOT by Clicking Here!

          Dan also writes content for hire, but you can't afford him anyway.
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            • Profile picture of the author raynman
              Thanks.

              What's the catch?

              I didn't see how much it cost or anything. Do you have to pay to join something?
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              • Profile picture of the author Joe118
                Originally Posted by raynman View Post

                Thanks.

                What's the catch?

                I didn't see how much it cost or anything. Do you have to pay to join something?
                Originally Posted by Joe118

                Oh and its free for site owners.
                As I said already...
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                • Profile picture of the author raynman
                  Originally Posted by Joe118 View Post

                  As I said already...
                  very very interesting.....
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          • Profile picture of the author raynman
            Originally Posted by Dan C. Rinnert View Post

            United Auto Workers.

            With the economy down, I guess some of them are writing articles now.

            Actually, it's the Unique Article Wizard plugin that Joe118 is talking about.
            I kept trying to figure out how a labor union would help me out. More competition for writing jobs...just what I needed.

            Unique Article Wizard is something I'll have to check out.
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          • Profile picture of the author cbright
            Originally Posted by Dan C. Rinnert View Post

            United Auto Workers.

            With the economy down, I guess some of them are writing articles now.

            Actually, it's the Unique Article Wizard plugin that Joe118 is talking about.
            LOL! priceless
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  • Profile picture of the author cbright
    definitely has me thinking about a couple sites I have laying around collecting crawler webs and cyber dust.

    Sounds like we need a good notifier/reminder

    Because I can ignore the calender all day, but I think a some kind of app on the computer that will remind me to do something that day about 5 times lol until I actually stop what I'm doing and go and do it would be great
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  • Profile picture of the author Steven Wagenheim
    I'm going to play Devil's Advocate to Marc's Devil's Advocate.

    (All with love Marc)

    I do this stupid little thing everyday.

    I go to Google Trends and pick out something that I think people will be
    interested in. Well, obviously they are...it's a hot trend LOL.

    Anyway, I put up a crappy Blogspot blog with some content, Adsense and
    an Amazon link if there is a related product.

    I've been doing one of these a day since October of 2008. It takes me all
    of an hour to put the site together. It's not a big deal and I do nothing
    else with it.

    I just let it sit there.

    I can't tell you how many of these crappy sites are STILL getting Adsense
    clicks even today.

    Where I used to only get Adsense deposits every 3 months, now I get
    them every month...for doing almost nothing.

    Sure, I could have spent that hour doing something else...but...very few
    activities that only take an hour really generate any income.

    Product Creation?

    How much more of a product will I get done in a day with just one hour.

    Articles?

    Wow, I can write a few more articles...like I don't have enough online
    already.

    Hmmm...what else do I do that's time intensive?

    Hmmm...that's about it.

    So my lousy hour is actually probably the most productive hour of my day.

    In fact, if I did MORE of these each day, who knows how much Adsense
    income I'd get each month.

    Sometimes those crappy little projects REALLY ad up.
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    • Profile picture of the author Steven Wagenheim
      Originally Posted by Marc Rodill View Post

      Touche. Essentially, it really all boils down to what your comfortable with.

      But damn, I must have been gone longer than I thought... over 13k, almost 14k posts?

      o.o
      It's called having WAY too much time on your hands.
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      • Profile picture of the author Ross Kenny
        You know what they say when you quit...

        "Success was only round the corner"

        How many projects do you think you've started and given up on that
        could have been successful... :confused:

        Makes you think hey!

        We all do it though... I'm bad for it!!
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    • Profile picture of the author Chris Hunter
      Originally Posted by Steven Wagenheim View Post

      I do this stupid little thing everyday.

      I go to Google Trends and pick out something that I think people will be
      interested in. Well, obviously they are...it's a hot trend LOL.

      Anyway, I put up a crappy Blogspot blog with some content, Adsense and
      an Amazon link if there is a related product.

      I've been doing one of these a day since October of 2008. It takes me all
      of an hour to put the site together. It's not a big deal and I do nothing
      else with it.
      Steven, do you create a new blog for each topic/trend or do you just have a generic blog that you do that for each day?

      Just curious.

      Thanks!
      Signature

      Ok, sure. You can follow me on Twitter - http://twitter.com/Chris_Hunter ;)

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      • Profile picture of the author skybucket
        Banned
        [DELETED]
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        • Profile picture of the author jhiggins
          I want to back up Steven's point.

          I get Adsense checks every month from sites I have long stopped paying any attention to.

          One of my best sites, that I haven't touched for 2 months now is bringing in $600+ a month in affiliate ebook sales. Granted, I did some decent backlinking to get it to page one on Google, but it's been sitting there consistently now, and the money keeps coming in.

          Hang in there everybody!!

          Jonathan
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        • Profile picture of the author Darren Tan
          Frankly from what I do know, tons of people are actually buying tons domains, setting up sites and leave for a year or so to see which niche is making them a little money here and there before scaling up with full force.

          I find it quite brilliant because worst come to worst with your aged domain, you still can turn a profit.

          Regards,
          Darren
          Signature
          "You are surrounded by simple, obvious solutions that can dramatically increase your income, power, influence and success. The problem is you just don't see them."
          Marketing Legend - Jay Abraham
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  • Profile picture of the author All Night Cafe
    I just downloaded the plug-in. Have been playing with it
    for a couple of hours.
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  • Profile picture of the author Joe118
    Steven, consistently doing a little of *anything* will add up to a lot of that something over time. Before you know it you're sitting on a whole pile of these blogs.

    I *would* however spread it out over several free blog hosters. Here's a list of some:

    4 aeonity.com
    4 bloghi.com
    4 blogmyway.org
    4 blogomonster.com
    4 blogr.com
    4 bloxster.net
    4 insanejournal.com
    4 journalhub.com
    4 justblogme.com
    4 shoutpost.com
    4 soulcast.com
    5 blurty.com
    5 experienceproject.com
    5 free-conversant.com
    5 freeflux.net
    5 terapad.com
    5 thoughts.com
    5 upsaid.com
    6 blogdrive.com
    6 diaryland.com
    6 journalspace.com
    7 blogsome.com
    7 edublogs.org
    7 multiply.com
    7 splinder.com
    7 tumblr.com
    8 blogspot.com
    8 livejournal.com
    8 vox.com
    9 wordpress.com
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    • Profile picture of the author Michael Shook
      I had a site in the Christmas market. For 2008 I monetized it with a product to sell, good product and exactly the kind of thing I thought my visitors would want. Total sales zero.

      This year, i thought OK, I could spend a couple of hours writing articles. So I did, put them on my site, 5 of them actually, and added my adsense code.

      Total revenue from those two hours - 126.18 all from adsense. All with zero promotion and all from yahoo traffic. Am I going to retire on that, nope. Am I going to hunt down a few more keywords to write targeted articles about, you bet. Am I going to do some more promotion next year, absolutemente.

      I am glad I did not quit.
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      • Profile picture of the author Hengster
        Originally Posted by JMichaelZ View Post

        Total revenue from those two hours - 126.18 all from adsense. All with zero promotion and all from yahoo traffic. Am I going to retire on that, nope. Am I going to hunt down a few more keywords to write targeted articles about, you bet. Am I going to do some more promotion next year, absolutemente.

        I am glad I did not quit.
        Thats a lot of adsense money from just 5 articles. How do you get so much traffic from such a small amount of content?
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  • Profile picture of the author Branlan17
    Yep, always keep moving forward with the SAME course you are set on, changing models every two seconds leaves you with a lot of pieces. > <
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  • Profile picture of the author Success With Dany
    Banned
    Originally Posted by Dan C. Rinnert View Post

    At the end of October, I had an idea for a site. I bought a domain name and put up a WordPress blog. Then, I found a nice theme for it. The site was to cover a couple profitable niches--not just one.

    My plan was that I could find the time to put up an article a day on it. Just one a day. Easy, right?

    I put up content for two days. That's it. Now, on the first day, I did put up about five articles--one for each category. Day two, I put up a couple more.

    Then, I quit. I think there are seven articles total.

    At times, I've thought about trying to do it regularly, but I've had things I considered to be more important. I even thought about just taking the site down but never got around to doing it.

    I did put Google AdSense on the site. Of course, my intention was to keep the site updated, not just create a junky little site with sparse content.

    I knew the site was getting some small traffic, but it didn't seem to register in Google AdSense. I already have one site that Google AdSense doesn't seem to think exists (even though ads display on the site), and it looked like maybe this was destined to be another. So, that was another factor in deciding my time was better spent elsewhere.

    So, I've largely ignored/forgotten about the site.

    In late December, when checking my AdSense stats, I noticed a rather nice AdSense click.

    You can probably guess where that came from.

    Imagine how much better the site might be doing if I had kept up with adding content and done something to actually get traffic to it.

    If I had done an article a day, I'd have over 60 articles on the site by now. That's more content to get indexed. And I could be getting more than a fraction of a visitor each day. And if the CTR remained about the same, and I could get one click a day, this site would be doing very nicely.

    This should be a lesson for newbies. First, you have to do some research and make sure you're getting into a niche (or niches) with some real potential. Next, you need to consistently work at it. And you need to be patient. On this site, I quit after two days. It took nearly two months before it had any results at all. If I had stuck with it, perhaps I could be getting more consistent results from it.

    In this case, I had some research and a good plan to back me up. I just didn't stick with the plan.

    So, let that be a lesson to you all.

    On the flip side, I received in the mail today a check for some of the work I was doing instead of working on this particular site. The second lesson is picking your projects wisely. Which, in this case, I did.

    You can't do everything, you know.
    I know TOO well what you have been going through with the whole quit- too-soon thingie...
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  • Profile picture of the author Profit-smart
    Time-Delay Posting

    Time delay posting is a *must* for the marketer who likes to finish something up in one long stretch.

    Get your favourite writer to pump out a predetermined amount of articles (For me, its usually around 165) and set them to post a day, or two days apart.

    Then sit it and forget it, until you decide its time to change things for whatever reason.
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